Inland police shootings: One officer ID'd, one not

In the first two officer-involved shootings in the Inland Empire since the state Supreme Court ruled that the names of officers who fire their weapons must be made public, the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department identified a deputy Thursday, June 12, while the Colton Police Department that same day invoked the officer-safety exception that the justices allowed.

On May 31, sheriff’s Deputy Timothy Garrison, a six-year veteran assigned to West Patrol Field Operations, was among the deputies responding to a report of a robbery in progress in the Denny’s restaurant parking lot in the 6800 block of Valley Way in Jurupa Valley.

Deputies encountered Rolando Soto, 28, of Fontana, who reached for his waistband during a foot chase, according to a Riverside County sheriff’s news release. Garrison shot at Soto and missed. Soto was then arrested.

On Tuesday, Colton police shot and killed Michael V. Gutierrez, 31, a resident of South Gate in Los Angeles County, during a struggle in which two officers suffered minor injuries. The shooting happened at 7:44 a.m. at Hunts Lane and Steel Road, where a caller told police there was a man with a gun. A firearm was found at the scene, Colton police said.

Colton police Detective Ray Mendez declined Thursday to release the name of the officer. Mendez stopped short of calling Gutierrez a gang member, but he did say that police were worried about the officer’s safety if he was identified because of Gutierrez’s “past and associations.”

The California Supreme Court ruled May 29 that the public has the right to know the names of police officers involved in on-duty shootings unless the police agency can articulate a specific threat to the officer’s safety. Justices ruled, 6-1, that public interest in police conduct outweighs police privacy concerns.

“Vague safety concerns that apply to all officers involved in shootings are insufficient to tip the balance against disclosure of officers’ names,” the ruling states. “… A mere assertion of possible endangerment does not clearly outweigh the public interest in access to records.”

The case stemmed from the 2010 death of Douglas Zerby, who was unarmed and holding a garden hose nozzle when he was shot by Long Beach police. The Los Angeles Times requested the identities of the officers involved in the Zerby incident as well as the names of all Long Beach officers involved in shootings in the five years before that.

The Long Beach Police Officers Association fought the request, arguing that releasing the names could lead to harassment of officers and their families because phone numbers and home addresses are easily found on the Internet.

The court rejected that argument and agreed with an appellate court ruling that the union and city had provided no evidence of specific safety concerns about any particular officer.

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